This is a video of a ghost version of Luigi riding around Mario Kart 8’s Rainbow Road. But don’t worry: this doesn’t mean he’s come back to haunt us all with a new, supernatural death stare.
Rather, the footage above shows a ghost driver pulled from a play-through of Mario Kart 8’s revamped version of the Nintendo 64 Rainbow Road, laid over the new Wii U version of Rainbow Road. It was made by YouTuber MrBean35000vr and his collaborator Chadderz, the modding duo who first broke Mario Kart 8 open earlier this month and began spilling its guts for the internet to see.
The video gives a neat perspective on Nintendo’s latest version of the iconic Rainbow Road track that players don’t normally get to see when they’re zooming through the thing during a proper race. But MrBean35000vr also gives some fascinating notes about the footage in the comments, where he spells out what making this taught him about the new game’s ghost system.
Ghosts are part of Mario Kart 8’s multiplayer that lets players race against each other asynchronously. So rather than going online and playing against other Wii U owners in real time, you can download a record of another player’s performance in the game’s Time Trial mode and race against that at your leisure.
It’s a neat feature that helps encourage competition between Nintendo Network friends. MrBean35000vr’s sounds a note of caution in his comments, however, saying that his work on the level highlights potential areas where these sorts of hacked ghost drivers could be transmitted to unsuspecting players.
“Any and all hacks are saved into a ghost and will sync on an unhacked MK8,” he writes. “This includes, but is not limited to, item hacks, coin count hacks, lap count hacks, lap split hacks, boundary check hacks, checkpoint mods, etc.”
“This makes it EXTREMELY HARD to detect subtle hacks, like miniature speed mods, as the ghosts will still sync,” he continues. While the blatant “hacks could be pre-detected by Nintendo before the ghost even hit Miiverse,” he suggests that competitive Time Trial players “could use to know this information for future reference to aid in cheater catching.”
“Do not take what you see at face value, even if a ghost syncs on your Wii U,” MrBean35000vr concludes.
As before, the duo has insisted that they are using this videos to have fun raise awareness about potential vulnerabilities in the game, not to encourage any form of cheating or piracy. Nintendo has kept the game relatively secure so far, so here’s hoping that it stays that way.
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